Whirlwind and Cleave?

[shawjames]

Bubba is surrounded by hill giants, since they are all within 5', he of course opts for the whirlwind. He strikes all 8 giants, but the last one falls from the attack. Can he use his Cleave to get another attack? Or if he had Great Cleave, could he swing at them all again, assuming the second attack hits?

If not, please reference page(s) that pertain to this.

Thanks!

 

[Magus_Jerel]

Um no -

Whirlwind attack is "in place of your normal attack you may ...
or similar wording

IIRC Cleave requires you to be making your normal full round attack action.

 

[Hejdun]

Cleave requires you to be making your normal full round attack action

Where does it say this?

 

[Eldric IV]

You can use Cleave as long as you "drop" an opponent. It does not matter that you used a Whirlwind Attack; you dropped the last giant so Cleave entitles you to one free attack against one of the other 7 giants.

If you had Great Cleave, you could continue making attacks as long as you dropped the one you hit. Great Cleave would not grant you another Whirlwind attack, only one other attack. If you continued to drop the giants, then you could continue to make Great Cleave attacks.

 

[Crothian]

Whirlwind and cleave work fine together

 

[Magus_Jerel]

Ok - I did not recall correctly - didn't have the book in front of me.

You get an extra "attack" - but it is part of the whirlwind sequence.

 

[Caliban]

Ok - I did not recall correctly - didn't have the book in front of me.

You get an extra "attack" - but it is part of the whirlwind sequence.

No, it's "extra", as in "addition to." Cleave will give you an extra attack in addition to the attacks from Whirlwind.

Of course, if you drop the next guy with your cleave attack, you won't get a whirlwind attack on him as well (unless you feel like striking the corpse before it hits the ground).

 

[kreynolds]

Um no -

Whirlwind attack is "in place of your normal attack you may ...
or similar wording

IIRC Cleave requires you to be making your normal full round attack action.

I can't believe this!

Ok - I did not recall correctly - didn't have the book in front of me.

You get an extra "attack" - but it is part of the whirlwind sequence.

LOL Stick with the Action thread. Comparatively, you were doing much better over there.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Just to forestall a possible follow up question - yes, whirlwind and great cleave is subject to abuse:

Case 1 - you are surrounded by a demon and seven of his kobold buddies. You whirlwind attack, drop the first kobold, cleave onto the demon, attack and drop the second kobold, cleave onto the demon, attack and drop the third kobold, cleave onto the demon... etc. Finally you take your ordinary whirlwind attack against the demon. That makes eight full-attack-bonus attacks on the demon in one round. Wow

Case 2 - the evil troll charges towards you, surrounded by a double ring of kobolds within his 10 ft reach. He starts a whirlwind attack against all his pet kobolds, and with each hit he cleaves onto you. The total number of cleave attacks he gets on you will be left as an exercise for the reader

Case 2b - the PC with a spiked chain carries around a bunch of trained rats/dominated kobolds/whatever and uses the same tactic... i.e. engineer a situation where whirlwind attack against numerous weak targets enables multiple cleaves onto a single tough target.

The only thing that the current FAQ says on this issue that I can find is this:

Do the Whirlwind Attack and Cleave feats stack? For
example, can I use Cleave to get extra attacks if a
Whirlwind Attack kills one of my targets?

You can use Cleave only once a round. If you have the
Great Cleave feat, however, you can cleave each time you
drop an opponent, even when the opponent drops in a
Whirlwind Attack. (When a foe drops, resolve the extra
cleave attack before finishing the rest of the attack rolls in
the Whirlwind Attacks.)

So unfortunately the current FAQ legitimises this awful "multiple free attacks" rules loophole.

IMO it would make more sense to take the cleave (or great cleaves) after the entire Whirlwind sequence finishes - so if *any* of the targets is dropped, you can great cleave onto another target... and if you drop that one you can go on (etc). This is not what the FAQ says, but it would enable the abilities to work together well without the multiple free attacks syndrome.

Cheers

 

[CRGreathouse]

It's not 23...

Case 2 - the evil troll charges towards you, surrounded by a double ring of kobolds within his 10 ft reach. He starts a whirlwind attack against all his pet kobolds, and with each hit he cleaves onto you. The total number of cleave attacks he gets on you will be left as an exercise for the reader

Assuming he doesn't actually charge (leaving his kobolds behind and preventing a WWA), he'll get an average of 6.65 Great Cleave attacks. WWA only works within 5 feet, and one of the spaces is taken up by the character he's attacking.

Note: A troll with enough fighter levels to have WWA and Great Cleave hits an AC 15 kobold on a natural 2 and drops it automatically on a hit.